making it up as I go along…literally

Month: May 2012

We have keys! Actual real metal jangly shapes that lock and unlock the doors at our new house! Wahoo!

We viewed the house in April, and put our application in at the start of May, and tomorrow is June. We initially wanted to get the keys on Monday, which was then delayed to Tuesday which was then rescheduled to this evening…which has lead me to pondering these past few nights how it feels like a lot of life is about waiting for keys.

Waiting for the keys to that house, that car, the key to success, the key to that special person’s heart, the key to happiness.

What happens when you finally get them in your sweaty little paws though? What comes next? That’s the hard bit.

I generally write blog entries in the evenings, when the boys are tucked up asleep, as that’s the only point during the day when i’m able to actually hold a thought in my head for longer than a few seconds before it is obliterated by a scream or cry or general demand of “MUMMY! PLAY WITH ME!”

However this past week or so, evenings have become just an extension of the day. They are both still going to bed early but then Rudy is spending the evening waking at least hourly and crying to be picked up out of his cot.

Ah yes, the cot. THE COT. What can i tell you? My boys don’t like cots. They clearly didn’t see the memo that every baby is supposed to read, telling them that they should like cots, that cots and babies go together like strawberries and cream, like fish and chips, like whiskey and rum…oh no wait…that last one might not be right.

Up until 10 days ago Rudy was still sleeping in his co-sleeper crib attached to our bed, and all was well with the world. Then one quiet afternoon, he decided that rather than take an afternoon nap, he would instead go on a little adventure. So he crawled out of the co-sleeper, climbed over a pillow mountain, crawled across our double bed and flung himself head-first off the side. At that point we decided that possibly, just maybe, it might be time to move him into a cot. With bars. Great for keeping babies where they are supposed to be. Not so great for keeping babies asleep. At least not my babies anyway.

Every night since has been a nightmare. Except not even, a nightmare would be a welcome relief at this point because having a nightmare would mean i was actually asleep in the first place.

To be fair to the cot, Rudy has also acquired his 1st two teeth since it’s introduction, so the timing has sucked and then there’s the heat, which i know everyone loves- yay it’s summer- yawn! Give me winter any day. One of the virtues people extol about this kind of weather is how much easier it is to leave the house with children- no need to bundle them into layers and layers of winter coats and hats they say, isn’t it fabulous? Maybe their kids don’t wear sunscreen, i don’t know. All i can tell you is that mine do, and trying to evenly cover two wiggly monsters in factor 50 when they’re itching to go outside and have a water fight, therefore undoing all your hard work is no more or less fun than trying to get a hat, scarf and gloves on them when they’re itching to go outside and play in the snow. It’s just the same shit, different day.

I do like barbecues though, because i love burgers and beer and gossip, and that’s pretty much what a bbq consists of 😉 so it’s not all doom and gloom this May sunshine.

I just wish Rudy would sleep. I mean, just sleep kiddo.

Right now he is asleep, on the bed though, not in the blasted cot. Hence me sitting here next to him on the laptop, blogging. This way, should he stir and decide to go for a crawl he won’t be able to catapult himself off the edge of the bed. Clearly not a sustainable solution, but i just couldn’t face transferring him into the cot and dealing with the fallout that would cause. So yes, morning blogging- just like evening blogging it turns out. Hurried and nonsensical, with a whole lot of whinging about lack of sleep 😉

Thank God Chris that he picked up a bottle of red wine on his way home from work this evening.

Just briefly, because Rudy is shrieking like he’s being torn from limb to limb (when in reality he’s being settled in to his cot by his Daddy with some gentle music playing in the background) i will paint you a little picture of life at the moment.

Wailing.
Sweating.
Not sleeping. EVER.

We were supposed to be getting the keys to the new house tomorrow morning but even that’s shot to shit now, because, as i have always suspected, all estate agents are either complete numpties, complete arseholes or a strange combination of both.

The shrieking just ramped up a notch. I feel sure that our neighbours finger tips are hovering over the buttons on their telephone, just twitching to call social services. I had better go take my turn really, just let me have one more swig of wine for the road…

So i think my boys must have secret spies who read my blog to them because for the past 2 nights Rudy has slept really well and Toby has been randomly waking up again! The same goes for tonight as well in fact, Rudy has been asleep since just before 7 but Chris is already upstairs cuddling Toby back to sleep after he randomly woke up crying and saying he feels poorly. (He’s all about the Daddy cuddles these days- i barely get a look in when Chris is at home. I try not to take it personally as he’s a fickle little thing so whoever is favourite today is likely not to be tomorrow and vice versa!)

Anyway i vowed to myself this entry would be about something other than sleep after reading back my previous entry and finding it to be what some might consider “whingey” 😉 So instead i’m going to fill you in on what we’ve been up to this past week or so.

Last week was bank holiday Monday and we all went for a day out at Reddish Vale Farm. It’s a small animal farm where you can learn about animals, stroke them, feed them carrots etc, just the kind of thing we were looking for but didn’t know was just around the corner, so that was a nice surprise. I just wanted us to all get out together for the day (in spite of the naff weather) and do something a bit different to what we normally do and it turned out to be a really fun day. We bought a bucket of carrots for 50p so we could feed the animals as we went round, Toby was a lot braver than i thought he’d be and was happily feeding cows, goats, pigs, donkeys, alapacas, llamas and sheep!

The only thing he wasn’t mad keen on the idea of feeding was the shire horse but to be fair, it was ginormous and even i was a bit nervous when it started trying to stick it’s big face into my bucket of carrots to hoover them out! It was all a bit much for Rudy, who had been tired to begin with anyway, so he fell asleep in the sling pretty quickly and dozed on and off for most of the day despite being rained on at various points and also being bumped into by a few ignorant folk who seemed to think he was a backpack?!

They had an area outside with a shelter over with a load of sit and ride Tractors which Toby obviously was in love with

When the rain got really bad we went into the little “education centre” where they had hay bales to sit on and rabbits to hold!

Then we had lunch in the tea rooms, which were pretty rammed on account of everyone having the same idea (that being: “It’s pouring with rain, it’s vaguely lunch time- quick, get inside and grab a table!”) We lucked out as some people were leaving as we were dithering in the queue, the food wasn’t anything to get excited about and quite pricey but we were cold and hungry so it went down well enough.

After lunch, like the responsible adults we are we took Toby on the bouncy castle that they had set up in one of the barns, which he had been pestering to go on before lunch to be fair, but it had been too busy. Anyway i don’t know what he was pestering for as once we’d paid and persuaded him to take his wellies off he basically just stood on the little landing strip at the front, looking a bit apprehensive whilst watching the other kids bounce for about two minutes and then declared he was “all done” Next up came his first ever pony ride however and that was much more of a success. There was some debate about which helmet size was best for him and then which pony, he requested the “small” one so we waited for the teeny tiny Precious to return from her previous ride and then up he got and off we went. I was doing my typical “Helicopter Mum” thing, hovering too close and fretting (inwardly at least) that he might suddenly let go/take his feet out the stirrups/dive off but i needn’t have worried of course. He did let go at one point but only to reach up to re-fasten the chin-strap on his helmet which had come undone, bless him. He looked pleased as punch trotting along, and very very cute!

After that we had a bit more ‘tractor time’

Then we headed home and somewhat predictably Toby crashed out asleep in the car on the way home and more surprisingly didn’t wake up when transferred into the house

Whereas Rudy, rested from his power-naps in the connecta, shrieked and grumbled and grizzled the whole way home, so i had to literally run in from the car, take him straight up to bed and feed him to sleep, only for him then to wake up after about 20 minutes!

Still, it was a good day in all, and something we’d definitely do again.

Tuesday and Wednesday weren’t particularly busy i don’t think (struggling to remember now) although i do know that we took a trip to the park. I took Rudy’s socks off and stood him on the grass and he had a similar reaction to Toby at that age- i.e. “WTF?!” Haha. He was scrunching his toes up and making a sort of “Errr” noise so the socks went back on and i sat him on a blanket so he could frown at the grass from a safe distance!

Last Thursday was officially Toby’s last day in nursery, not that it made much difference as he hasn’t actually been for about a month now. Basically, since we gave them our notice that he was leaving, we have been giving him the option in the morning whether to go or not and he’s been picking not. Thursday was the same but we had a little talk and agreed that we’d bake some cakes in the morning and then take them in to nursery in the afternoon to say goodbye and thankyou, and after reassuring him he didn’t have to stay if he didn’t want to he agreed to the whole thing. I made my first ever cupcakes from scratch using a basic recipe i found online(which makes me sound pathetic i realise, but we’ve always used those ‘kits’ for cakes before) They turned out really well anyway (even if i do say so myself!) and Toby had fun decorating them (or more accurately- tipping sprinkles and chocolate balls all over the kitchen counter) although seemed to misunderstand and think that he was allowed to eat each and every one he decorated so wasn’t best pleased when we clarified that with him.

When we went in to nursery a couple of the girls didn’t even know it was his last day, but the new room lead did and she’d got all his pictures down off the wall etc for me and had them in a carrier bag ready, and another one of the girls gave me his file that he’s had since he started there, so we got to bring all that home with us, which was nice. I’m not sure if he’s old enough to really understand the concept of ‘leaving’ somewhere as in, never going back, but he waved and said goodbye and gave them the cakes and a thank you card and they said what a lovely polite boy he is and how they’ll miss him which was sweet. He kept saying “come on Mummy, let’s go now” which i think was him wanting to make sure i wasn’t going to try and trick him into staying for a bit (which i had no intention of doing!) It was a funny feeling thinking he won’t be going back when it’s been a part of his (and our) lives for about 19 months or so but i know we’ve made the right decision.

We also had a busy day on Friday as we had playgroup in the morning and then straight from playgroup over to sling meet in the afternoon. Sling meet was super busy with lots of new Mums and babies though so i didn’t get chance to ask for help with my back wrapping which i really need to do as i still can’t get my head around how to even get him up there on my back without help.

Then the weekend continued along a similar vein of busy-ness, but in a good way. Saturday we went to see Emma and Ben which is always good fun. Toby was in a funny mood, with his toddler PMT, but even he enjoyed the yummy dinner they made for us (more so when he realised he could eat it with tiny cocktail sticks with Danish flags on them which they’d put out for the olives!) and afterwards we walked to Fredericks Ice Cream Parlour and Toby tried to break the world record for how messy one small boy can get with a chocolate ice cream! Haha.

Then Sunday we had a family christening in Bradford and i became a godparent for the first time. I’m not sure if you’re really technically allowed to be a godparent as a non-believer, in fact i’m pretty sure you’re not, but my cousin wanted me for her eldest son’s godmother, and she first asked me almost ten years ago so i wasn’t going to let her down. I wasn’t forced to say anything i didn’t believe to be true, and there were a whole load of other godparents too as my cousin was having all three of her children baptised at the same time so it wasn’t like the spotlight was all on me. At one point i did become extremely concerned that the vicar, with his billowing sleeves was being very relaxed about the fact my cousin’s 1 year old daughter was waving a candle in his direction, but other than that the service itself wasn’t too stressful 😉

This week we haven’t done much to be honest, Monday and Tuesday were mainly spent at home, with a brief excursion to the post office/shops yesterday. We’ve all been a bit run down and snotty, Rudy especially is particularly gunky and i’ve got a pesky cough, so we cancelled our plans to meet up with one of my friends yesterday for fear of infecting her and her little girl. Today we were all a bit brighter though so went to one of the local soft play places for the parent and toddler morning. We came out with a few scrapes and bruises randomly but it was a good way for them both to burn off a bit of energy (it was raining again) and a nice enough way to pass a couple of hours.

Today we also got the news we have been waiting for almost two weeks to hear: We are OFFICIALLY moving house! Wahoo! Our application has all gone through now and everything is sorted, so all being well we’ll be getting the keys on the 28th or 29th of this month, which actually is really really SOON! And we haven’t packed a single thing yet- ARGH!

I know i’ve been a bit quiet on this whole moving house topic but it’s only because i haven’t really wanted to start talking about it and getting excited in case it didn’t end up working out for some reason but now it’s all official i will spill the beans- just not right now as this is already bit of an epic blog entry and anyway Rudy is shuffling on the baby monitor so i may well be summoned very soon!

This very well might be my last ever blog post as i am so tired that i will soon die.

That’s what it feels like anyway. I have gone way beyond tired actually, and a little past exhausted, i need a new word to describe how chronically lacking in sleep my life is, i’m just too tired to think what that word might be.

Rudy, never the world’s best sleeper to start with, has started waking even more frequently during the night and it’s killing me. He just wants to feed all night, or rather, remain attached to my boobs all night, he doesn’t actually necessarily want to feed some of the time, i think he just likes to know they’re there. I have been going to bed later in the evenings because i discovered that no matter what time i go to bed, he wakes up as soon as i am in there, so it only prolongs the agony, i may as well stay up and enjoy having some time to myself/with Chris because an “early night” just means the nocturnal wakings start even earlier and i have to spend a few extra hours in a weird sleepy half-awake state contorted into some uncomfortable position waiting for my son to decide i can have my own body parts back.

Yes, i’m getting fed up of breastfeeding- can’t you tell?!

I didn’t get to this stage with Toby until much much later, so it’s been a surprise to me the strength of my feelings this past week or so. On Saturday night i went to bed at midnight (i was engrossed reading my Kindle) and Rudy woke up as soon as i went in the bedroom and spent the next 2 hours latched on, just doing little fluttery sucks now and again but protesting whenever i tried to roll away. In the end. at 2am, when i felt physically sick from tiredness and feeling totally touched out, i unlatched him and unceremoniously plopped him back into his crib and rolled to the farthest side of the bed away from him and tried to ignore his squeaky protestations. It did not work. I had to scoop him back out, feed him some more and then once he was properly asleep shift him back again.

Clearly something needs to change, i’m just not sure what (or how). I have a copy of the “No Cry Sleep Solution” which i bought when Toby was coming up to a year old. I remember briefly reading it and one of the first things it says is “Are your child’s sleeping habits actually a problem, or is it just other people/society as a whole making you feel that way? Do you really WANT things to change?” and reflecting and thinking “Nah actually- it’s not so bad” I think at that point Toby was sleeping a 6 hour stretch in the evenings though in a cot in his own room, and then just coming in with us during the early hours of the morning and feeding a couple of times. So looking back i can see why i felt like i didn’t really need a change to happen, it was just other people saying “He’s almost a year old and still feeding during the night?!” that had prompted me to buy the book i suppose.

Today when i read the same paragraph though i was like “Yes! I am exhausted, resentful, DYING! Give me the answers!” So as a first step, mostly to help me feel like i am actually doing something, i have started keeping a “Rudy Sleep Log” as of today, so i can see how bad things actually are, before deciding what to do about it.

Toby is sleeping great at the minute, we haven’t had any random night-wakings for a few weeks now. He is still getting up at the actual crack of dawn though which is rough going after the nonsense nights with Rudy. He is a bit of an emotional wreck at times, breaking down over the slightest of things but he seems to have come out of the other side of his weird picky-ness with food that we had going on for a few weeks and is back to gobbling everything up.

We had a nice week last week, and i have some lovely pictures to share but i’m not sure i have the energy to write about it all just now so might have to save that for another time.